


A Long, Final Rest Among the Stars

by nostalgicatsea



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Avengers: Endgame trailer spoilers, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 17:32:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16958436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgicatsea/pseuds/nostalgicatsea
Summary: This wasn’t a cave. Nebula wasn’t Yinsen, and they weren’t captives. But he had come full circle back to Afghanistan.He was stranded, with no sign of life anywhere and no hope of rescue. And he was going to die.





	A Long, Final Rest Among the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, [ishipallthings](ishipallthings.tumblr.com), for cheer-reading.<3

It was everything and nothing like Afghanistan. Outside the ship stretched miles and miles of nothing but space, an emptiness that surrounded them from all sides. They could go on for eternity and everything would look the same, the stars that they left behind in their wake indistinguishable from the ones ahead of them, to their sides, above and below.

The last time Tony had seen so many and so clearly, he had been walking, the soles of his feet cracked and blistering through his worn shoes, across an unchanging, incomprehensibly vast landscape of sand with no clear destination in mind, reduced to nothing but agonizing thirst and hunger and the simple, almost automated, task of continuing in a straight line to…he didn’t know. He hadn’t known where he was or what direction help lay. He had made the mistake of looking back once and nearly collapsed to his knees and sobbed; all his steps had been smoothed away or lost in little ripples of sand that stretched as far as he could see, identical to the terrain in front of him. It had been as if he had made no progress at all. The only thing that had kept him standing was the knowledge that if he surrendered to despair, he wouldn’t have had the strength to stand up again, and while death was almost certain before, it would have been guaranteed then.

He didn’t look back now.

It was the same as it had been last time.

There was no hope of rescue. No hope of rescuing himself. Nothing he could gut or tinker with to create more food and water or enough fuel and oxygen to help both Nebula and himself get to where they needed to be. To hold on long enough to see their destination.

All Tony could do was hope that they went straight on the path that they had set and got close enough for someone to pick up on his signal and bring him home, even if he wouldn’t be able to see it.

A small part of him, a cowardly part, was glad that he wouldn’t.

He would never know for sure who survived, and in that way they were alive and would be until the end, not just in memory but in possibility.

He dreamed of them, sometimes dead and sometimes alive, and he would always wake up, tears sliding down hot and fast as soon as he opened his eyes, never sure which hurt and terrified him more.  

Nebula never said anything, and he had long stopped caring what she saw.

She was gentle even if she wasn’t warm, and he knew she was mourning like he was. He had heard the unsteadiness in her voice as it had given to rage and distress on Titan. Had seen her grief when he glanced at her before returning his attention to Quill, trying to keep him grounded as they tried to take down the father who told her she was little more than scrap metal, not even valuable enough to be a tool anymore.

The father who killed her sister.

Vormir.

The Soul Stone.

Sacrifice.

She told him what happened a few days into their journey, earlier than he expected considering she wasn’t one for idle chatter.

Tony could tell that she wasn’t used to talking, and they didn’t talk all that often, at first because they both preferred to tend to their grief alone and she was more stoic than sociable, and then because they couldn’t afford to waste more oxygen than they had to.

But they did, sometimes. It was hard not to when they had only each other, when they couldn’t avoid each other in such an enclosed space, when they were hurting the same way.

It made him think of his captivity more than the endless trek through the desert although the circumstances couldn’t have been more different. He was safe and warm, the coldness unable to penetrate the ship unlike the chill that had crept into every crevice of the cave. No one was torturing or threatening him. He hadn’t been near water in the last days before their reserves were depleted; comfort and hygiene were low on their list of priorities compared to hydration.

This wasn’t a prison.

It may as well have been one, though, considering escape wasn’t an option.

He couldn’t even open a window for fresh air. He didn’t realize how much it would affect him until he had to resist the overpowering, invasive urge to smash one open. The tiniest of cracks would mean asphyxiation, something he was extremely aware of at all times even when he tried not to dwell on it, careful not to let the panic that occasionally rose inside him boil over and come out in heaving gasps because all that would do was use up oxygen they could ill afford to waste.

He thought about it more as they began to run out of it. He hadn’t experienced the vertigo and breathlessness that came with not getting enough air in years, but he had never forgotten it—and as soon as the oxygen dipped to an uncomfortable level, he was back in the cave, struggling to adapt to his diminished lung capacity, to the intrusive, crude thing sitting in his chest.

Nebula had caught him rubbing his chest without thinking about it, a habit he still had even after he had the arc reactor taken out.

That was the first time she had let him look at her.

“Your heart,” she had said, voice hoarse with disuse and flaking with rust.   

And then, later, because they didn’t have many secrets to hide—shame was a concept that didn’t matter after, that he could no longer feel; it was only pain that they tried to avoid inflicting on each other, and they were so careful of that, the two of them, assassin and death merchant alike—later, she asked about the modification.

Or rather, who altered him.

“I did. To protect myself. To fight against threats like Thanos,” he had answered as he worked underneath one of the plates in her head. It had been extended far past its limit, and he wondered how long she had been going around like this and what had happened to her. The strains on the servos and wiring running down her body were too consistent, and her cybernetic parts had been put back in place exactly where they should be; this wasn’t wear and tear from battle.

Nebula’s dark eyes flitted down to her arm and then to her batons a few feet away. She said nothing about ineffectiveness, about uselessness.

“But before that, a guy did it to keep me alive,” he said, catching her gaze as she looked at him and then off to the side again. “A stranger at the time.”

He was Yinsen, operating in a cave with his hands inside metal and flesh. He was on a table, with Yinsen peering down at him. A mostly fictitious memory, since he couldn’t remember anything but the briefest snatches of his operation, beyond the pain that had consumed him whole and blinded him.  

Nebula was everything and nothing like Yinsen.

A man who had been determined to help him escape as soon as the Ten Rings had brought him, near death, into the cave. Who had been firm with him, tough, but understanding. Honest as he made him face all he had done and all he could be but never cruel.

A man who had played backgammon with him using spare nuts and washers, who had shared stories and exchanged ideas and theories to test, knowing the whole time that he would never be able to work on them and that only one of them would make it out alive.

Nebula spoke less. She was more distant. There wasn’t anything nurturing about her.

But she had put aside more rations for him, tersely explaining that she could survive longer without food and water than he could. She had kept an eye on him even if she didn't say anything or touch him, watching for any signs of infection from his wound and of his grief being too heavy to shoulder by himself. She understood what it meant to be alone. She was alone. Now more than ever, but for a long time before then.

She had given him the last gift she could. Privacy and lack of judgment as he used the last bit of energy in his suit to make recordings that most likely would never be seen to people who may have already died instead of something useful or something that would at least prolong their deaths.

He hadn’t had time to say his goodbyes, to reach out to anyone one last time before he left Earth. It had happened in a matter of minutes.

He had had nothing but time for a while after they left Titan.

And now time was finally running out. Yesterday had stretched out and been too short at the same time, and they were a few hours into the last morning. He had minutes left; he wasn’t sure how many, but he knew he didn’t have long, the way his mind was winding down and growing sluggish.

It was strange, anticipating death like this. It was a more peaceful end than he could have imagined for himself, devoid of the fear or suffering he had experienced in the cave and with palladium poisoning, devoid of the surge of adrenaline he had thought would come in battle one day, because he knew that was how he would go no matter what dreams he had and what promises he made—he had never been, and would never be, able to walk away from this. This was his life’s work. His life’s purpose.

Tony thought of his first death as he waited for his final one, Yinsen’s face so clear in his mind even a decade later, struggling to stay awake as long as he could as Yinsen had in his last moments.

_“Don’t waste your life, Stark.”_

He wondered if he did okay, if Yinsen would think his sacrifice had been worth it even if it was something that he would never be able to repay even over several lifetimes. He tried his best even if he messed up more times than he would have liked, but he guessed neither his best nor his mistakes really mattered, not when half the universe died and he hadn’t been able to stop it.

What was the point of making something out of his life when this was what he had been spared for? It was just as important not to waste his death as it was not to waste his life, and his death would be a meaningless one, a death that helped no one and changed nothing.

His father’s voice in his head—or was it his own?—from now, from decades ago, sharp with rebuke and disgust.

_“Useless.”_

He would die anonymously, unheard and unseen in the wastelands of space among millions of stars, all too big and too bright and too many for anyone to notice one light, his light, flickering out.

His light was dimming.

He rested a hand clumsily on it before dropping it again, fingers numb and cold.

It was getting much harder to breathe now. To focus.

Nebula was…somewhere. His thoughts were scattering. They had said their goodbyes. They were just waiting now, each of them retreating to their own space, spending their remaining time with the people and memories they wanted to be with the most before they went.

He had been so afraid of this, of going into space again, of everyone dying except him, but no one was here and it was a relief—seeing people he had just met die was bad enough, having Peter die in his arms, sorry, so sorry, for something he wasn’t at fault for, for something he should have protected Peter from, worse than half of the universe, less real in that moment than the kid he held to him, dying galaxies away—but it was isolating too. Everyone was gone now or hadn’t been with him in the first place, and there were no armies of aliens like there had been in his nightmares, only emptiness.

He thought of his first flight, of what it felt like to soar up as far as he could go, to test his ability to reach the stars he had loved so much. Thanos had taken that love from him, but he was here now and there was a terrible beauty to space, the unlimited expanse going on forever all around him to an unreachable horizon, an infinite number of stars being born and dying and shining in the never-ending night—small, silvery pinpoints; large, aging giants; glittering, colorful nebula. Nebula. He was glad he had Nebula. Nebula, who was kinder than she would ever admit, than she would ever know. Nebula, who he hoped would reach safety somehow without him. Nebula, who he wished he could save from the fate that he had feared, the fate that belonged to him, being the last one remaining, the witness.

Tony looked out to the heavens, and they lay in front of him, silent, deadly, and more breathtaking than anything he could have ever imagined, and he thought of them all as his eyelids grew heavier and it became increasingly difficult to stay awake.

Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy. His parents. Jarvis and Ana. His kids—the bots, JARVIS, and FRIDAY. Peter. The Avengers. The new kids. The original gang, the ones who had been there since the beginning. Bruce and Natasha and Thor and Clint and Steve.

And Steve.

There were so many of them; he hadn’t realized that.

There was a distant light at the edge of his darkening, fading vision, warm and golden, moving towards them or maybe they were moving towards it.

It made him think of the countless sunrises he had seen in his house in Malibu. It was dawn, right at the newborn cusp of it, when the sky was still mostly dark. He had woken up too early, and he was going back to sleep now, under the covers next to Pepper, on his cot in the tower workshop, on the couch with the Avengers, Steve close to him but always out of arm’s reach even when he stretched out.

 _Gold_ , he thought. Gold dipped in fire, cascading down her bare back, before she turned to him that night in her lovely blue dress. Gold accenting armor, JARVIS painting on hot rod red; he was Iron Man. The suit and I are one. Gold above him, a halo forming in the aftermath of their first battle, his smile the first thing he saw when he jolted back to life, more radiant than he had ever seen it be before or since.

It had been a long, long night. At some point, he had closed his eyes. He didn’t know when he did, but he didn’t think there was a point in opening them anymore. He could dream of all of them and be with them there, in the darkness behind his eyes where they were waiting.

He thought of them, of everyone he loved, brilliant and full of life like the stars around him, even the dead, as he faded.

Someone touched his shoulder and said his name like it was time to go or time to wake up, his journey finally at its end.

“Tony,” he heard from close by and far away, and he was six and his mother was waking him up after the car ride home, he was twenty and Rhodey was trying to get him back to the dorms before he got blackout drunk, he was thirty-five and twelve and forty-two and nineteen and he had to go, it was time to leave.

An echo came from nowhere and everywhere, its hand on his shoulder, its voice in his head.

“Tony,” he heard the voice whisper again, and it was all their voices all at once, calling him to them from here and beyond, all with him as he drifted off, into the boundless darkness, into the stars and the lights he had loved and then feared and loved again.


End file.
